Twitter was launched on this date in 2006, only it was called “Twttr,” with no vowels. The social media platform is famous for its 140-character “microblogs.”

On its launch date, the company reported 224 “tweets” for the whole day.

On its fifth birthday, users logged that many tweets in less than one-tenth of a second. In an early review of the platform, the Techcrunch website reported, “People are using it to send messages like ‘Cleaning my apartment’ and ‘Hungry.’ You can also add friends via text message, nudge friends, etc. It [is] really a social network around text messaging.”

Many countries since then have routinely shut down or blocked Twitter during times of upheaval, natural disaster, and national emergency. Clay Shirkey speaks about this in his video How Social Media Can Make History.